Two meetings were scheduled to happen at the same time Tuesday — Derby Planning and Zoning, and BOAT. The P& Z meeting started and was held without a hitch using the ZOOm video conferencing application.
But anyone trying to join the BOAT meeting received a message saying the meeting’s “host” was already in another meeting. It turned out the city’s ZOOM account would not let officials host two meetings at the same time.
Another tax board ZOOM meeting is scheduled for 8 p.m. Wednesday (May 20).
The Derby Board of Education had been scheduled to present its proposed 2020 – 2021 budget to the tax board last night, but it looks like that presentation will be pushed until next week (probably next Tuesday), according to an email from Derby Town/City Clerk Marc Garofalo.
The school board is asking for a 5.9 percent increase to its budget. That’s about $1.09 million over the current budget.
While the ask is large, school officials point out the school district has not seen a budget increase in two years.
Meanwhile, costs, such as contractual agreements with the teachers, are rising.
“For two years we’ve gotten a zero percent increase. It’s really hard to sustain a program, it’s really hard to move a program forward, with no money,” Derby Board of Education Chairman Jim Gildea said in an interview with The Valley Indy earlier this month (click the play button at the top of this story to watch the interview recorded May 5 with Gildea and Derby Schools Superintendent Matthew Conway).
The largest increases in the budget are for certified salaries, student transportation services, and tuition paid to private sources (which could mean paying for services for kids with special education needs that cannot be met within the school system).
Gildea compared the budget increase to not investing in the upkeep of a property.
“At some point, as the chairman pointed out, things catch up,” Conway said. “You have to pay the bills, and we are at that point.”
The superintendent noted that since the COVID-19 pandemic forced school buildings to close, students have been learning from home. There will be kids that will need to catch up on academics during the next school year. Those type of catch-up programs usually involve investment, possibly in new positions or additional programing.
“That isn’t in this budget,” Conway said.
The Derby tax board is coming off a terrible budget year, one that saw a tax increase and the revelation that the city “double counted” grants by accident. The city’s bond rating was downgraded, and the city had to draft a “recovery” plan that included selling assets and refinancing debt.
